Una Mullally: Coronavirus response is like providing fire exits only during a blaze

In a crisis smart people tend not to reach for bad ideas. Our country’s de facto leaders, and the expert officials who are informing their actions, have chosen equitable societal instruments to guide us through the Covid-19 pandemic emergency: a single-tier health service, bringing private hospitals into this new national public system, freezing rents, bolstering unemployment benefits and free childcare.

These are all tenets of a fair, empathic and equitable society. They also, perhaps, offer some kind of guiding light as to how we can rebuild our society, which will probably be in a deep recession at the other side of this miserable event.

Will we be able to unsee this crisis-era social model?

For so long people have been insisting upon a robust and fair public health service. For so long people have been calling for rent control. For so long childcare costs were the hidden – yet increasingly not – burden of families across the country.

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Health, housing, and childcare, the trifecta upon which our most recent election was fought from the public’s point of view, have been radically overhauled practically overnight.

For a long time the desire for new systems ended with a frustrated shout into the void: “just effing do it. Just make it happen. Say you’re going to do it, and then do it.”

Governments have adapted a “computer says no” attitude to massive system change. Crisis forced the hand.

Good ideas in a crisis are good ideas outside of crisis, and bad ideas reveal themselves to be even worse than initially assessed when a crisis comes knocking

We know that overhauling systems tends to cost money which is often not very well spent. But when Fine Gael pulled the tablecloth off the national dining table and left the crockery still standing, it really was some trick, one which may bear repeating.

There were no consultancy fees or communications agencies or advertising campaigns. It just…happened. These are strange times, upending normal behaviour and things we once held to be true.

‘Corona correction’ 

The “corona correction” is continuing to cause some bizarre knock-on effects. Poetry is being read out on radio. Sport is no longer part of many news bulletins. The Irish beef industry is scrambling because McDonald’s has closed its outlets.

But one of the biggest twists was Fine Gael leaning into what can be broadly characterised as socialist policies. Good ideas in a crisis are good ideas outside of crisis, and bad ideas reveal themselves to be even worse than initially assessed when a crisis comes knocking.

Unlike a left-wing party, these new societal coping mechanisms are not policies in Fine Gael’s portfolio that it really wanted to whip out whenever the opportunity presented itself. This makes the impetus to enact them even more profound. They are counter-intuitive to centre-right ideologies, but because they work they have to happen.

In design thinking there is something called the extreme user. The extreme users have needs that are very amplified. They are not casual users, and they often hold the key to informing how something – let’s say a product or a system – should be designed.

An example often used to illustrate the design insights an extreme user can offer is the invention of the OXO Good Grips kitchen utensil brand – high-quality, cooking tools that are comfortable to use. They were designed by Sam Farber, whose wife, Betsy, suffered from arthritis in her hands. Faber set out to make utensils that were easy to grip, and it turns out many more people than those with arthritis caught on to them because they worked so well.

How can a government now say: you can have rent freezes at this moment but not at that one?

What is good for the extreme user tends to be appreciated by a broader population. The same goes for the now ubiquitous four-wheeled suitcase. Initially these were mostly the preserve of airline cabin crews who often needed to rush through airports, gate to gate. But what was useful for them turned out to also be appreciated by a far greater cohort of people.

Extreme users 

We should listen more to the extreme users of public services as they can inform us how best they are designed.

We should formulate rent controls based on the needs of the most cash-strapped renter, not the desires of landlords.

We should build public health systems based on the needs of the sickest people.

It’s an asylum seeker who can tell us how best they should be housed, not a hotelier.

A society in crisis can be viewed as a sort of extreme user. A society in crisis has amplified needs, yet the lessons those needs teach us continue out of crisis.

How can a government now say: you can have rent freezes at this moment but not at that one?

How can a government say: we know that a single-tier health system actually works, but you’re only allowed have it for this period?

How can a government say: we know free childcare is extraordinarily necessary, but just for this amount of time?

It’s like saying we will only provide fire exits during a fire because at all other times we don’t need them.

As we begin to pandemic-proof our society we will learn what is essential, what is necessary, and what actually works.